Sunday, 23 December 2012

As
part two of my contribution to the Counterfeit
Kit Challenge countdown to Christmas, I 'm back today to share my
scrapbooking process with you (or one of my processes anyway).

We all
took this different directions and I decided not to link it up to the page kit
I shared with you yesterday, but rather to follow myself as I made a layout and
notice the decisions I made and the thought process I went through to come to
the end result.

Now this
is a LONG post so I have reduced it down a little. But you can find the full
post over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog today.

My
starting point was a photo that just shouted out to be scrapped of my new
niece. Knowing I wanteded to base my design on white cardstock gave me a good starting point for me to then go to my piles of stash and start picking
out anything that spoke to me. Before long I had a half dozen or so sheets of paper or scraps that
seemed to go together. I laid them out and added a few embellishments to the
pile so I could see what would work together. A few papers got taken out
straight away and in the end, I only used a few of those selected.

The next step for me is to lay out some paper blocks
to see how the colours are combining and to estimate the layers I want to
incorporate. I just cut up blocks of paper and only then work out how
and where to put them. I
lay out the papers on the page to see them together and then added a few of the
embellishments. My process is very fluid! As ideas hit, I just fish out the products from my stash and add them to the pile.

At this point, nothing is attached so I picked everything up and started gluing down, lightly pressing
them down until I know that the position is correct. When everything looks
about in the right position, I flatten all the items down with my hand to fix
them all.

Next up comes the photo and the beginnings of my
embellishments, usually placed in small, dimensional clusters, and very often
forming some sort of a visual triangle or diagonal across the page.

It’s now that I start rummaging around in my stash for
extra little items to add in to my clusters.

For this layout I continued to poke around on my desk
and discovered some washi tape before I looked through my alphabets for something that would be
suitable. I knew I wanted to write a long title but wasn’t sure what or where.
When I came across these small BG letters, I knew they would be perfect due to
the large number of letters on each of the sheets. I did this title back to
front, starting at the bottom with the last word and working back to the
beginning of that phrase before deciding how the title should start (wording)
and where I would put it. That is another reason I like the current trend for
small letters so much: it doesn’t restrict me so much and I can usually find a
small corner to squeeze in these words.

One of the issues with creating the page like this is
that there’s been no planning for my journaling! However, for this layout, I was
lucky as the photo is the main focus, the title is long and says a lot and
therefore the journaling was almost not needed. But I don’t make many pages
with no journaling at all, so I got out some rough paper and jotted out a few
lines until I found something a bit more than, “You are gorgeous and I love
you”! Then I copied this into the small corner I’d picked out and was relieved
to find it fitted in.

The last thing I did was to add some super thin paper
strips (as you cut them, they naturally develop a curl) along the side of the
photo with a small pink ribbon bow at the bottom that had caught my eye in my
scrap bag.

Now it’s time to step back and have a look to see if
everything is working ok together. I check for balance, for colours, for
crooked letters (although they are always a bit crooked!), for if something
else is needed to add a little extra.

So there you have it, a typical page following a
typically chaotic process for putting it together. I hope you enjoyed this
little insight to my rather disorganised brain.

Again, there's a bit more detail over at the Counterfeit site if you'd like to read the whole thing.

Now, all that's left is for me to wish you all a very Merry Christmas everyone!

Saturday, 22 December 2012

If you've been following along this month, you will already know that over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog, we're doing things a bit different and have all created mini-kits for each month of the year.

And if you've been paying attention, you'll also know that we are up to November. So here I am.

I chose November as a few years ago, I decided to change my attitude to this month that has such bad PR. You won't find many people telling you it's their favourite month or even that they love it. But I decided to start to feel more positive about it and that attitude has worked for me - I really do like it a lot more than I used to. You might even say that I love it!

Ok, it can be grey and cold and miserable but so can any month. It makes you appreciate the wonderful blue skies even more when they do appear. And the build up to Christmas starts in November which was my starting point for my mini-kit.

I decided to focus on Traditions. And there are a few I thought of straight away for November which I thought might be good starting points for you to think about.

There's Bonfire Night for those of you in the UK, complete with hot sausages, a roaring fire and fireworks. Then there's Thanksgiving for all of my stateside friends. A huge X on the US calendar for sure.

But how about the traditions in the build up to Christmas, many of which start in November?

Your family might have the obligatory unveiling of the decorations.

You might always put the tree up the last weekend in November.

You might wait to start playing Christmas music until the beginning of November (or is that just me?).

You might take an evening to write all your Christmas cards.

You might be organised enough to get all your presents and then spend an afternoon in front of It's a Wonderful Life and wrap them all up.

Here in Germany, the Christmas markets all open up at the end of November and it's tradition to head out and get the first Glühwein of the season.

Of course a big one is the first Starbucks Christmas drink in those long awaited red cups

But the big one that came to mind for me is all about Advent. Lighting the first candle on our Advent Wreath on the first Sunday of Advent. And that is more often than not in November. Of course this year it's 2nd December, but you know what I mean!

So, with all these November Christmas traditions, I decided to delve into some of my Christmas stash which doesn't actually get used for so many layouts, and create a mini kit I called Anticipate

The products I've used in my kit are mostly quite old and to be honest, could be used for more than just Christmas which I thought was important for my November kit. I could use it to make layouts about winter, cold days, cosy times or ski-holidays if you take out the Christmas themed stamps. Very versatile. Why not look at your Christmas products to see how else they could be used? It's a shame to just use them for those three or four days of the year.

the important thing about a mini kit is to really restrict yourself but to make sure the amount of stuff you have in it reflects how much stash you pile up on your background cardstock/paper. If you put too much in, it's just another monthly kit. Too little and it's not enough to motivate me to use it and I will reach for the rest of my stash while creating which defeats the point of a kit.

I've included two pieces of cardstock as my page kit is really big enough for two. There may therefore be a second layout to come. I've made sure there are large and small letters, a good flurry of embellishments and as a challenge to myself as I buy them and don't use them, some stamps.

But in the meantime, here is my Advent layout for you.

ADVENT LAYOUT HERE

Thanks for joining the Master Forgers this month for a look through a year's worth of inspiration. Please make sure you let me know you were here and share your creations with us over at the Counterfeit site.